The growth of online media in recent years has stirred up the notion that traditional advertising will eventually become obsolete but global and regional industry leaders think differently. “The Google business model has without doubt introduced a significant transformation into the overall advertising space, but it will not replace the traditional advertising model”, said Lord Timothy Bell, chairman of Chime Communications Plc., at the 14th Annual Offsite of BPG Group, one of the leading integrated marketing communications companies in the Middle East, held in Abu Dhabi recently. BPG Group is a strategic partner of Chime Communications. Lord Bell reassured the audience that the growth of online media will not overturn the advertising industry's status-quo in the long run. “Like television in the 1960s online media will eventually become integrated as part of the wider offering of traditional advertising media,” Lord Bell said. Traditional advertising expenditures in the US, the largest advertising market remained flat in 2007; a sharp contrast to the exponential growth in revenues accrued by new media companies like Google. Lord Bell was a founding member of Saatchi & Saatchi and has been a key advisor to chairmen and chief executives of many of Britain's leading companies and organizations, as well as foreign heads of state and international business leaders and politicians. BPG Group, which comes under the WPP umbrella, one of the world's largest communications services groups, recently added a digital practice to meet the emerging online and digital marketing needs of clients. Avi Bhojani, Group CEO of BPG Group, said: “BPG Group has undergone steady expansion since its inception 27 years ago. As an integrated marketing services company, our growth has been meteoric. BPG Group has grown at a compounded annual aggregated rate of over 51 percent year on year for the last five years. Our growth has largely been driven by our ability to understand the needs of the market and provide an integrated offering of multiple services through a seamless delivery system”. Over 220 BPG team members from across the GCC region gathered for three days of learning and celebration. The event too saw some of the renowned names in the international and regional marketing communications industry offering participants the best of their experience and invigorating perspectives. Keynote speakers included Ranjan Kapur, country manager, WPP India, and Roy Haddad, chairman & CEO, JWT MENA Group. The event also had workshop sessions for each strategic business unit; lecturers from the New York Film Academy delivered a presentation on TV production management, while BPG Public Relations hosted senior newspaper editors as guests in their “Meet the Media” session. This year's workshop focused on the need to return to the basic standards and values in marketing communications covering multiple disciplines. BPG's set of core values “Can Do”, “Collaborate” and “Care” was further strengthened at this annual gathering with the addition of “Celebrate”, as a fourth core value. “As a company we must now focus on our four core values to move ahead into an even successful future. Our task for the coming year is to go up the value chain by going back to basics. We must further sharpen our skills, focus more intently on our clients, build our team with quality human capital, and celebrate every single achievement. By focusing on our human capital, we will be taking an important step towards realizing our envisioned future - to become the trusted knowledge partner of all our clients”, Avi Bhojani said. __
